Spider-man books

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by garoo1980, Mar 27, 2011.

  1. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

    Joined:
    May 12, 2004
    Location:
    Lancaster, PA
    The publisher is Moonstone, who has already published a couple of AVENGER anthologies. And, yeah, a few of his sidekicks appear in my story.
     
  2. tomswift2002

    tomswift2002 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Dec 19, 2011
    Earlier this year I read "Spider-Man: Wanted Dead Or Alive". I don't recall who the author was, but I remember that one of the editors on the book was Keith R.A DeCandido. I found the book rather enjoyable.
     
  3. scnj

    scnj Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Sep 11, 2009
    I was admittedly being facetious. I figure seven years is enough time to know something's not happening.
     
  4. Admiral_Young

    Admiral_Young Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Feb 27, 2002
    Location:
    Gotham
    Craig Shaw Gardner is the author of "Spider-Man: Wanted Dead or Alive" I believe.
     
  5. veritech

    veritech Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Nov 14, 2007
    I would be interested in hearing your opinions on decompression in modern comics. Personally, I find it somewhat annoying as a comics reader of the 80's and early 90's. I've always read that writers today are made to "write for the trade", but I can't confirm the accuracy of that statement.
     
  6. KRAD

    KRAD Keith R.A. DeCandido Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 28, 1999
    Location:
    New York City
    Admiral Young is correct -- that was by Craig Shaw Gardner, and was one of the 50-odd Marvel novels that Boulevard Books published from 1994-2000. I was the Supervising Editor of that line of books, and I still count that line as one of my proudest accomplishments in the publishing biz. :)

    Several Trek authors contributed to the line, starting with me: the Spidey novel Venom's Wrath and short stories in The Ultimate Spider-Man, The Ultimate Silver Surfer, Untold Tales of Spider-Man, The Ultimate Hulk, and X-Men Legends. Others include Nathan Archer, John Gregory Betancourt, Greg Cox, Peter David, Diane Duane, Michael Jan Friedman, Tony Isabella & Bob Ingersoll, Dean Wesley Smith, John Vornholt, and J. Steven York.

    Ah, memories............
     
  7. tomswift2002

    tomswift2002 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Dec 19, 2011
    Re: Spider-man books/Byron Preiss Marvel Books

    Recently I've managed to read The Venom Factor by Diane Duane that launched the 1990's-early 2000's Marvel line of books. It was a really well done book, with it feeling like a possible episode of the 1994 TV series (albeit it with a PG rating rather than a C or G rating).

    Right now I'm currently in the middle of the X-Men: Mutant Empire Trilogy (I'm on book 2 right now), and again it really feels like this trilogy could've easily have been a Season 6 or later episode of the 1992 X-Men TV series (again at a PG level rather than a C or G level). A few of the team members are different from what was seen on the TV series (Jubilee's missing, however Bishop and Archangel are members of the X-Men team) and I'm glad that the Rogue in the story is the Rogue of the 1992 TV series. I remember with the first X-Men movie it took me about 6 or 7 viewings before I finally realized that Anna Pasquin's character was Rogue, since aside from reading maybe 10 X-Men and Spider-Man comics (including two with Spider-Man in Canada, where Spider-Man was at the Calgary Stampede with his wife Mary Jane and their baby cousin/nephew that I got at a Canada Day event), I had seen most of the 1992 X-Men and 1960's & 1994 Spider-Man TV series. Even now, for me whenever I think of the character Rogue, I think of the Rogue from the 1992 TV series with Ms. Marvel's flying powers, and not the "empty cup" Rogue of the movies and 2000's X-Men series, who I find is kind of a weakling when compared to the 1992 Rogue. So I really enjoy how the Rogue in the trilogy is the 1992 Rogue that I remember from the TV series.
     
  8. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2001
    ^That "1992 Rogue" dates from her debut in the comics in 1981. Taking Ms. Marvel's powers was the first thing she did in the comics.
     
  9. tomswift2002

    tomswift2002 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Dec 19, 2011
    And it really made her stand out from the other X-Men, and it even gave Storm a partner in battles.
     
  10. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

    Joined:
    May 12, 2004
    Location:
    Lancaster, PA
    I confess I still have my Spider-Man story, which was reprinted in WEB OF SPIDER-MAN #120 framed on the wall of my office.

    It was about Morbius the Living Vampire, of course.
     
  11. tomswift2002

    tomswift2002 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Dec 19, 2011
    Which story is that? Was it in one of the anthologies?
     
  12. Defcon

    Defcon Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    May 9, 2003
    Location:
    Germany
    After spending a minute on google :p, I guess he is talking about Cold Blood from this anthology: http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Spider-Man-Stan-Lee/dp/0425170004/
     
  13. tomswift2002

    tomswift2002 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Dec 19, 2011
    I just ordered that anthology earlier this week. I'll have to read the story when I get it.
     
  14. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

    Joined:
    May 12, 2004
    Location:
    Lancaster, PA
    Bingo!
     
  15. Jsplinis

    Jsplinis Lieutenant Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Dec 20, 2012
    After reading Christopher's comments on Pocket's policies concerning continuity, I was wondering if KRAD could comment on the policies for the line of Marvel books he was in charge of. Were they meant to happen in the comic continuity, the concurrent cartoon continuity, some other continuity or one of their own? Also, are they written as stand alone stories that don't have to stay consistent with each other like some Trek novels or do they try to stay consistent with each other?
     
  16. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2001
    Keith would know better than I, of course, but from the books I read, my impression was that they were like most tie-ins in general, or like Trek tie-ins were in the '90s: Basically consistent with the core canon (in this case, the comics) but not really integrated with it, so that from the perspective of the canon they'd be along the lines of alternate history or historical fiction.

    I've hardly ever come across a comics-based novel that was set in the continuity of an animated adaptation, except for Geary Gravel's novelization of Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. There have been comic series published as tie-ins to animated adaptations and set in their continuities, though they usually weren't canonical with respect to those series (although the Young Justice tie-in comic was canonical). I do recall a Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman novel by C.J. Cherryh, but it was actually more of a generic Superman story with a few trappings of L&C's continuity and characterizations, without really feeling like an L&C story specifically. And I seem to recall a couple of stories in the '80s Martin Harry Greenberg-edited Batman anthologies being set in something approximately like the Tim Burton universe -- at least, I recall a Joker story that seemed to be about the Jack Napier version. But those are the exceptions.
     
  17. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 22, 2004
    Location:
    Arizona, USA
    There is also the Smallville Season 11 comic series, which basically does for Smallville what the Trek Relaunches did for their respective series.
     
  18. KRAD

    KRAD Keith R.A. DeCandido Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 28, 1999
    Location:
    New York City
    The Marvel novels I edited were in a modified comics continuity -- basically, we hewed as close as we could to the comics while still mostly dealing with the archetypal versions of the characters. For this reason, even though the comics at the time were doing things like the Spider-clone storyline and Reed Richards being dead and Ant-Man being in the Fantastic Four, not to mention the whole Age of Apocalypse and Heroes Reborn/Return thing, our Spider-Man novels just had Peter Parker as Spidey in them while married to Mary Jane, our FF novels all had the original foursome in them, etc.

    But more importantly, the novels were consistent with each other. The books all had a timeline in the back, and I made an effort to keep the "Marvel novelverse" coherent and consistent. So, for example, Dr. Octopus's appearance in the "Doom's Day" trilogy picked up on his previous appearance in Diane Duane's The Octopus Agenda.

    We also had a series of novels-only characters who showed up in several stories, most notably a bunch of NYPD cops who interacted with Spider-Man and Daredevil, and the intelligence organization Strategic Action For Emergencies, or SAFE. (See our license didn't allow us to use S.H.I.E.L.D., beyond the occasional mention. So, since S.H.I.E.L.D. was international at that stage, answerable to the UN rather than the U.S. government, we created SAFE as a purely domestic agency.) Sean Morgan, the head of SAFE and several of his subordinates regularly appeared in the novel line.
     
  19. KRAD

    KRAD Keith R.A. DeCandido Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 28, 1999
    Location:
    New York City
    Oh goodness, no. The Trek tie-ins of the 90s were the antithesis of what I was trying to do. :)
     
  20. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2001
    Okay, then. I was going by the few that I've read, basically just Diane Duane's Spidey trilogy and her X-Men novel (Empire's End), plus PAD's Hulk: What Savage Beast. I hadn't realized there was a unified "novelverse."